The Oil Drum

outlying areas are getting hit hardest

I would guess that it is the exurbs, where all the lifeboater are headed, taking the big hit and not the suburbs.

I see older neighborhoods in the Keller, Southlake, Grapevine area (midway between Dallas and Ft Worth) sprouting For Sale signs, and some look suspiciously empty and unkempt. At the same time, luxury subdivisions are still building new houses at approximately the same rate. Don't know how many new McMansions are actually being sold, though.

I have noticed morning traffic near DFW/Hwy121/114 is significantly lighter than when I first moved to this area two years ago. Higher prices or fewer jobs to commute to?

The last line from "The Last Slum":

"About 25 years ago, Escape From New York perfectly captured the zeitgeist of its moment. Two or three decades from now, the next Kurt Russell may find his breakout role in Escape From the Suburban Fringe."

In recent years, more "escapees" have turned up in my neighborhood way out west on what used to be the last frontier in the lower 48. They bought their McMansionist ways with them in driving up land prices for second and third homes that were occupied for two months in the summer. Of late, for-sale signs have appeared on some of these trophy dwellings. The former occupants may be escaping back to the metro areas they came from in their fleets of Hummers, Escalades and Porsche Cayennes that contrasted with the muddy pick-up trucks of the locals.

In case any TODers are so fortunate as to "Get out of Dodge", ahead of the golden hordes there may be room for you out here if you will drive a muddy pick-up truck and don't mind living in an abandoned McMansion.

Thanks Atlantic Monthly and best hopes for the regentrifying of urban America.